A stereoview consists of a pair of nearly identical images that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope, because each eye sees a slightly different image. This illusion of depth can also be recreated with animated GIFs like the ones here, which were created from Flickr images posted by Okinawa Soba. Follow the links under each animation for the original stereoviews and background information.

eren

re: edward – just put them at large size on your computer monitor, stick a piece of cardboard down the middle and put your nose to the cardboard. You’ll have to work out the proper distance from the screen but you should be able to trick your eyes into the stereo effect that way (it’s just a different version of the View Master technique, really)

To take pictures like this, you need two identical cameras and a viewing separation of about 10°, both pointing at the right focal distance. Tricky, but possible with a nice mounting system (best if you had a way to periscope the camera viewfinders into each eye to help matching the focal distance.

Or just get one camera and get tricky with it.

I like how the animate gif makes those sumo wrestlers look like they’re actively flexing.

I also note that those sumo are far different from what we expect of the sumo of today.

These pictures are amazing.
I’ve always been found of animated stereoviews (and also looping gif like 3 Frames : http://threeframes.net/ ) but this collection is wonderful : subject, colourization, technique, everything is perfect.
Thank you for posting this.

Bowzart

It’s entirely possible to merge a stereo pair with no equipment at all, just the eyes alone. It isn’t at all easy to learn to do it, but once learned, can be fairly easy to do. It requires only two steps.

First, one must cross the eyes so that the individual pictures converge into one. On either side of the converged pair, there will be the pictures that will be less saturated; these are the opposite images each seen by only one eye. It is similar to the trick some of us learned in childhood of putting the index fingers together pointing toward each other, and then crossing the eyes to produce a third – a double-ended “finger” in between them. This part is pretty easy.

Second, with the eyes in that crossed position, they will focus at the point where their axes cross, which is intermediate to the distance to the pictures. While the pictures are converged, they will be out of focus. It is necessary to learn to focus the eyes at the actual distance to the picture instead of where they naturally focus. This is not easy for most people. Some people can learn this; many cannot. I won’t say that most cannot, because I suspect that many could do it if they thought in important enough to try to learn it. I have known very few people who can do this.

I learned this in kindergarten at nap time by looking at an acoustical tile ceiling with regularly spaced holes. I discovered that by superimposing adjacent rows of holes, I could make the ceiling appear to come down toward me. By converging rows spaced farther apart, I could get it to come even closer.

Since I can do it, I’d much prefer a straightforward presentation of the entire pair to the animation.

Lurinda

Geisha Girl

LOL! I would have thought such a talented individual would have been able to read the paragraph at the beginning of the page stating "Follow the links under each animation for the original stereoviews and background information"

Siobhan

I can do this too, I doubt it's that rare considering how popular Magic Eye prints were in the 90s. The linked pictures are too small to fully appreciate though but I've had so much trippy fun looking at 3D images around the net.

Laura

I’m sorry to correct you but the term “Geisha” is used too much in this. A Geisha would never be sitting on the ground outside “having a beer”. A Geisha is a highly trained woman who only would be seen by very few, who could afford to see their entertainment. They always wear a white face make-up, they never went out into the general public.These women without make-up they are simply a Japanese woman, wearing her best clothes. The girls playing music are also not Geisha (note lack of white make-up). The young girls with the cat, are probably young girls in training for Geisha.
Geisha’s were not prostitutes, but were woman who lived to entertain others. Although I have heard that many became concubines for the emperors, but he was the King and I guess you don’t say no to royalty. lol

Geisha Girl

Yoshito

Laura I'm sorry to disapoint you, but the "geisha" you are referring to,who "always wear a white face make-up", and who is "a highly trained woman", it is just a modern construction. Those attributes begun to define a geisha, only after Meiji, when other high level prostitutes as tayu and oiran disappeared. Thus, geisha assumed from that period on, many functions which were attributed to high level prostitutes (most of all from Yoshiwara) before Meiji. Edo period geishas were more worldly and common, than the stereotyped one you've mentioned.

Terry Marshall

Sue Ladr

I agree with you. They weren't meant to move, but were meant to appear in 3D. When they are made into animated gifs, they background should not move. In other words, the two parts to the stereoscopic image don't make good animated gifs as they are.

Mike

Another good way of seeing 3D images is to use a program to mirror the left image. After you have the two images on the computer screen use a hand mirror held to the side of your nose, you should now be seeing the left image in the mirror and the right image of the screen at the same time. The advantage of this way are listed.
One no flickering image. Two no crossing of eyes. Three no distortion of image from using red and blue glasses. The drawback is you will look goofy holding a mirror on the side of your nose. The results of this method are good. Use caution while using mirror.

Stuped

Timothy

And, predictably…someone is OFFENDED! ENDR, “just a thought”, did you ever think that this guy took pictures of geisha because, well, you know…that’s what priviliged Japanese artists would choose to photograph? No; it’s got to be “racism” or “stereotyping” or whatever else it is you’re bitching about. People like you will ruin anything- a gorgeous set of photographs from a world that literally does not exist anymore, and you have to come here w/ some bullshit pseudo-Marxist rhetoric about a Japanese photographer stereotyping OTHER JAPANESE!!! Go pound salt up your ass, and learn to appreciate things of beauty w/out making it into some goddamn “cultural studies” thesis. Moron.

low salt diet

Timothy (and Geisha Girl), you're way too emotional about this. And your sensibilities seem to be overly delicate. What does it matter if someone thinks the term 'Geisha' might have been overused? Is it really worth ramping up the aggression to such a pitch?

As for bitching, your tone is a lot bitchier than any other person's here. Pound salt up your ass?

If you're not careful, someone might mistake you for a bullying, embittered, no-life loser.

Timothy

Laura, too- it’s just terrific that the one thing you people can fixate on is that there might be a “hate crime” going on in the insensitive, chauvinist and- what’s that term Said coined?- ah yes, “Orientalism” expressed by the captions to the goddamn photographs. Unbeleivable! Perhaps if we added a caption to the “geishas” saying in thought bubble “Math is tough” then you’d really have a coniption- or even a point. But as is, it’s just typical mindless political correctness from people trained to take offense and find it wherever it be- and often, where it not be. Disgusting, and giving bad names to “liberals” everywhere w/ reflexive, pedantic and ultimately pissy complaints about something that is really absolutely nothing at all.

Globalstomp

M. Nestor

For the couple of armchair Japanese experts who read Wikipedia after reading Memoirs of a Geisha and came here to complain about the captions, try doing a little research on these photographs and you'll learn something about the Geisha modeling in them. No need to return and apologize, though, the rest of us have spent our time enjoying the images and had some schadenfreude at your expense.

Leslie MJ

fascinating....some images really connect with my early memories, like the wood cutters- I had a doll like that when I lived in Tokyo as a little girl....no western clothing visible in any of the shots...I remember a procession of Buddhist priests like the one shown...and really interesting to see the Nikko road/Chujenji mountain shots. Amusingly self referential with the Geishas looking at stereo images.

Carl

These images are not presented in cross eyed view, they are in parallel. To 'free-view' them, you must stare through the images fixing you gaze at a distant point until they merge, just like those 'magic eye' pattern pictures. While it would be nice if these images were presented in cross eye format, they are not.

iLKKe

Yeah, it's awseome this way, I am between wondering how strange our seeing-apparatus is that it gets fooled by something like this and being deeply impressed by this 3D-journey back in time (for some reasons 3D feels more real than photo or film …).

TUN

REFFI: Actually Japan has Shinto for births and weddings, Buddhism for funerals and spirituality. Shinto is older in Japan, basically a grown up animistic tribal belief system where the Emperor has been raised into a diety, but Buddhism has been practiced there since the mid 400's (AD).

Ann Aconda

Susie

I actually MIGHT have enjoyed these photos if I could have just LOOKED at them, and not gotten sick to my stomach within seconds. I also have vertigo, so maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but you've ruined some dramatically historic photos, and it's a bloody shame.

I've travelled a lot through different Asian countries and so Japan is a must see for me in the comming years. This incredible pictures of ancient Japan urges me to bring my dream into reality. Thanks for sharing the beautiful motives with us.

jeroboambramblejam

Interestingly, the effect works using only one eye; I would like to hear from those who have sight in only one eye, whether the effect works for them, and how long ago they lost their sight. Best wishes.

one eye

I only have 20/20 vision in one eye - the other is blurred, and these worked, even when I closed my blurred eye completely. But seriously, if it worked for you with one eye closed, why would you think it wouldn't work for me?

It looks more as if someone tried to create the parallax effect with digital photo manipulation. The far-away background often "moves" much more than it would be expected. Distant things should "move" the least. Think of the moon, and how it seems to be fixed there, no matter where you go, whereas buildings will go passing by, the closer they are to you, the "faster". Or try look at two objects, one somewhat close to your head and another a bit farther apart (your hands, for example, but make them still); then strafe your head half an inch from side to side and see how the object farther apart "moves" much less than the one that is closer.

geek

Does anyone know a reason why this technique cannot be applied to modern 3D movies, released on DVD? The trick would be to speed up the switch rate rate beyond the capability of human perception (I would guess that half the monitor refresh rate would be context sensitive to the hardware, but likely suboptimal). To test this idea, I would like to try the above as displayed here, except with a very high switch rate, but none of my hardware is capable.

mericus

It was attempted in the fifties using two motion picture cameras playing the same movie side by side, but they found the colors would bleed so much that much of the actions scenes were just a blur of color. Then they tried the same spectrographic color change to create cmyk and rgb in print today. It was found that light could be changed to resemble the print color but the method to do that was slow to be perfected. Hence why this technique is not re-creatable in movies.

Sal

Re; Geisha/No Geisha
I guess that 70 years on this planet has taught me to look for the simplest answer. Because the photographer, T. Enami, who was chronicleing late 19th- and early 20th-century life in Meji-period Japan, was a contemporary of those women and he captioned them as Geishas... He's probably correct and people living in this century are simply making educated or, in some cases, uneducated guesses about their professions and/or community standing. Nobody is doubting the Sumos or the Buddha...why fiddle on about the women?
The truth is simple and the argument sure isn't worth the acrimony being heaped up here.

Reader

These are beautiful stereograms! My wife is from Ueno, and she and I have been to Ueno park many times, so that old-timey photo of the Ferris Wheel is particularly pretty awesome for both of us to see.

As for the "Geisha identity crisis":

@ Sal has a good set of points. I am convinced that these labels placed on the photos should be taken as valid:

1) Some of the photos are indoors, and photo equipment for stereograms (especially back then) was big and requires a lot of setup. So this means he wasn't just doing "snapshots of strangers on the street". He must have communicated with most of these people directly ... therefore one would suppose that the photographer knew their position/status in society and a little bit of basic info about them.

2) SO, it is reasonable to assume that the photographer (who has probably passed away by now, I'd guess) *MET* the women who he says are Geisha (as well as most of the others in the photos). He had to have been in the same room with them. He had to have told them "Now hold still for a few seconds ... don't move or it will be blurry!"

3) The photographer *LABELED* the photos, with the occupations of the people who he *MET* and photographed.

4) The photographer was actually there LIVING IN the culture. I'm betting the photographer has more insight into who these people are than anyone commenting here.

So if that photographer who met them, talked to them, lived in their society and photographed them ... says they are Geisha ... then they are Geisha. Case closed.

Kepla

Thanks so much for putting these up on the web for us all to enjoy - and also to whoever took the photos in the first place of course. Despite anyone's misguided attempts to impose modern-day political views upon these historic photogrpahs they remain a fascinating record of Japan a century ago.
If there was any way that the original pairs could be made available for those who wish to view them stereoscopically, it would be marvellous ! All kudos to the person who turned the pairs into animated GIFs, so we can appreciate each as a single image - a bit like using a 'blink comparator' in astronomy - but having access to the original pairs would be 'the icing on the cake'.
Once again, thanks.

I'm surprised by all the people saying many of these women aren't geisha - all the photos labeled as geisha do certainly appear to be. The elaborate hairstyles, large obi, and sometimes makeup give it away. Geisha would often socialize together in public during the day; the pair in question drinking beer, however, were probably either photographed for art's sake, or for a client.

LW

Geek (and others): Speeding up the animation wouldn't work, the images would just blur together until they looked like they were superimposed, but at the slower speed your mind sees it as if you were moving your head from side to side.

Buckaroo: The distant background jumps around because the cameras weren't pointing parallel but were focused at a near object. The object at the focal point will remain still while objects nearer and farther will appear to move. For example, in the picture of the firewood dealers the focal point is very obviously the woman in the front. You'd get the same affect if you could focus your eyes on a near object (say your finger in front of your nose) then wink each eye back and forth without changing focus. Or point straight ahead with both arms then cross your arms in front of you. Where your arms meet would be the focal point (if your eyes were shoulder width apart), where your two fingers are now pointing in the distance would be the background image for each eye.

chin-a

sfwrtr

Very spooky to have such old pictures look so real. I've been to see the tori gates at the Inari shrine, and took a picture almost at the same position. To see them under construction... Very, very interesting!

Nicu

I would like to thank Pink Tentacle for hosting this series of GIF animations based on my larger series of Flickr posts. Although I am a "free-viewer", and prefer a stereoscope over the GIF conversions, the series above is still fun to look at as part of the variety of ways 3-D images can be played with and enjoyed. By the way, I am not the one who made the conversions. But whoever edited the Flicker Sets down to the selection above had a good eye for nice images, and did a nice job converting them to GIF animations, including an optimum rate of "flickr" speed.

Concerning the WOMEN SEEN IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS. The women drinking beer in the park are GEISHA. The women in the studio and veranda shots are all GEISHA and MAIKO (apprentice Geisha). They can be differentiated by their hair ornaments and obi ties. I will let a Geisha and Maiko fan jump in with their own comment to explain the difference for everybody here. The two girls bowing to each other in the "Meeting at the Gate" view are both MAIKO (apprentice Geisha). The "Firewood Dealers" and the "Clam Diggers" are all "regular women" of various middle and farming (peasant) classes.

The photographer T. ENAMI only hired real Geisha and Maiko to be his subjects for his posed studio and park scenes. This was standard practice in the late-Meiji era when he took the photos ca.1898-1908. Out in the rural districts, he simply stopped people in the course of their work (asking them to "hold up a bit" until he got the shot) or else used one of his equipment carriers, "coolies" (jinrikisha pullers) or assistants to pose in solitary...such as the "Traveler in the Mountain Fog" in the above set. In spite of their buff appearance and near-six-pack abs, the "Sumo Wresters" at the top are real. Back in those days, the professional ranks ran from tough and buff, to beer-bellied whales. Today, the TV tends to show only the fat ones.

Since the argument is most vocal about "Are they GEISHA or NOT GEISHA?", I would recommend that those interested in the argument read the first half of the caption at the first link below, and the whole caption at the second link. It explains the nature of the Geisha's true responsibilities, and their important, understood-at-that-time work as professional models for the photographers of the day.

2plus3equals4

PS to the above. At the time of these photos Geisha did not always dress in super fancy Kimono, and go around with their faces painted as white as a ghost. There were occasions for that, of course, but it was not a 24/7 thing. Photos of modern-day Geisha only tend to show them "in character", and give the impression that they eat, sleep, and clean house while dressed to the hilt. This is simply not so.

The Geisha of old were photographed in all manner of character, including tea-picking peasant women, kitchen-bound housewives, beach-babe bathing beauties, and as Fairy-Tale Godesses floating on the sea. The also took days off, and could go to could go to a park in "casual dress" to have a couple of beers, and get their stress out. And that's what you see in the shot above of the two Geisha having their little picnic.

Robert W, Cox

To the Trip person asking where were the Samurai? They would not be in these pictures because they were banned remember? Saigo Takamori led the Samurai against the Meiji government forces using gatlin guns the US supplied them with, so they were dead, dude. And this is not Korea wtf ? And no, Tom Cruise was not there either.............Ok?

Pertti Jarla

KISH-314

Have to send HELP to those people again, less than 6 months another earthquake.wow 2011 is going to be a SAD time in HISTORY for the PEOPLE OF JAPAN>>>>I HAVE A BOX OF GLASS SLIDES HAND COLORED BY SOMEONE FORM OLD JAPAN HOPE WE CAN DO SOMETHING WITH THEM BRING BACK THE PLACES AND SHOW THE OLD WAY OF LIFE AND THE WAY THINGS WAS BACK THEN>>(1826-1920'S) WOW TALK ABOUT THE LOST PAST/HISTORY.